


Queen's Coffee

by Pennynic



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: AU, Anne of Green Gables AU, Coffeeshop AU, F/M, Shirbert, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 04:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11798730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pennynic/pseuds/Pennynic
Summary: Anne had planned to spend her first year of University working most nights and studying all others, hoping desperately to cause no dramatic scenes (for once), and fly under the radar. Unfortunately, her hopes are dashed the night an exhausted Gilbert Blythe appears during her shift.Featuring Gilbert's terrible flirting techniques, and Anne's almost worse ways of responding to them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Third chapter! Thanks to all of y'all for being so patient, it's been crazy trying to get this chapter done. Hope you enjoy, and as always thanks so much to @yesshirbert for Beta reading!

Anne’s place of current employment, as she liked to say to people, was at the Queen’s coffeeshop next to her building, right outside of college campus. It was by no means the best job there, but Anne was supposed to find one in the week before school started, and this was much more of a last resort than she would've liked. She didn't live in the neighborhood, but it didn't take long to familiarize herself with the college campus and the streets around it, and there were definitely other places she’d considered. Certainly there should’ve been jobs with better pay and better hours, but she’d only had so much time to look, and the only real job she’d had was working at Matthew’s little country pub as a bartender when she turned 16. It wasn't really the most age appropriate job, of course, but Anne liked it enough.  
In the city, though, things were a little different. Anne planned to fly under the radar, although that was something she’d never accomplished before. But, she was certain being an underage bartender wouldn't help her chances. So, the coffeeshop was her place of current employment for the moment, and at least it involved some sort of beverage-mixing, which was a blissfully familiar territory.  
It wasn't perfect, of course. In fact, Anne would've much rather preferred not working at all, using all that extra time to study like her suite mates did, and not rushing off to work four nights a week. But she supposed it was better than staying in and listening to Ruby and Josie’s chatter, not that she was happy to leave that to her roommate Diana, who she met barely a month ago and already loved dearly. Although she could make up for missing a night of studying, she couldn't make up for the severe student loans she would have to take out if not for this job.  
Nevertheless, she liked the work. The customers were primarily the kindred spirits of elderly customers who were overwhelmed by the college town they resided in, rarely ever ordering anything more complicated than an espresso. All the regulars were painfully polite, coming in every afternoon to read a book and sip on a drink, although the shop was rarely ever crowded. Anne had lots of time to think during her shifts, which could be deadly but she found rather relaxing, and the mostly blank decor provided a big scope for imagination. Her co-workers (or rather, co-worker) was a nice girl named Jane, who was quiet when they worked together, seeming to savor the silence almost as much as Anne herself did. It was an alright job, if she did say so herself.  
But there were rare occasions when Anne felt that the job wasn't at all worth it.  
These thoughts, coincidentally, appeared in her head every time Gilbert Blythe stepped through the door.

She’d heard stories about him previous to the first time they’d met, mostly from her two suite mates Josie and Ruby, who’s chatter never failed to attack Anne’s senses the moment she stepped into the room. They swooned over his “dreamy eyes,” constantly, to the point where Anne wasn't sure that he had any other defining features, and even Diana could be persuaded to join the conversation once in a while. Anne didn't really have much to add to these late night catch ups on Gilbert Blythe’s day, especially since she had to deal with him close up and personal, almost every time she came to work. And he never was as dreamy as they made him seem.

It had started weeks ago, when the girls had just brought up the subject of Gilbert Blythe. Anne was almost fooled by the ways they talked about him- he’d been gone for the first few weeks of classes because of his father, who lived in London, (“Can you believe it Anne? London!) and he was a brilliant aspiring doctor, they said, with just the most handsome looks. Anne was almost excited to meet him, even let herself daydream of an epic romance of a small-town girl like herself and a boy with dreamy eyes from London, but in the one brief encounter she’d had with him, all of her hopes were shattered.  
She was working a lonely shift- her co-worker, Jane, had gotten sick, and a day off. As well as having no one to talk to, there were barely any customers the whole night, leaving Anne alone with her mind, and dreaming of being in a nicer place than this.  
She was musing about her creative writing assignment when he walked through the door, disrupting her train of thought instantly. He was tall, with dark curly hair and dark eyes, and seemed to be falling asleep on the spot. Anne herself was tired beyond belief, even after downing three black coffees, and the line between her wildly overactive imagination and reality was becoming dangerously blurred.  
His eyes, after a minute, finally landed on her, and he seemed to remember what he was doing at the shop in the first place. He walked up to the counter, tripping over his feet slightly with each step he took, and finally decided to lean on it, perhaps to help his balance.  
Anne replaced her growing look of confusion with a smile, and tried to call up an attitude of well-rested, polite service. “What can I get for you today, sir?”  
What he responded with was quite possibly the most extreme, complicated order she’d ever heard, containing multiple half and quarter shots, three different types of milk, room for cream, and piping hot coffee.  
She had stared into his eyes for a good minute, wondering how someone who couldn’t walk right could memorize that much nonsense. She glanced him over, and decided that this was absolutely the type of boy to order something so ridiculous. He was wearing an expensive-looking knit sweater, dark jeans, and loafers, which she took as a sign.  
She sighed loudly, hoping that he was able to hear it, and grabbed a cup. “Name for the order?”  
He stared, puzzled, but answered. “Gilbert.”  
She scribbled the name on and repeated the order back, just to make sure that she’d gotten it all, and he had nodded, his eyes wide for some reason. It took her ten minutes to make the order, ten minutes of devoted concentration that usually she only called on for exams. She barely glanced at him while she made it, but all the while wondered if this was the same Gilbert Blythe the girls had been reminiscing about dreamily. Even Anne couldn’t imagine it, but just to be sure, after snapping the lid onto his cup, she’d asked him.  
“Gilbert Blythe?”  
He’d nodded, took the coffee, and left ten dollars in the tip jar, still slack jawed as he left.

Gilbert was tired.  
He’d flown in three hours earlier, and had spent the remaining time catching up on assignments and his friends, barely remembering that tomorrow was a Tuesday, and he’d have to be up for morning lectures.  
Instead of going to sleep, which in hindsight, would've been the sensible thing to do, Gilbert had wandered the halls for a while in a sort of trance, asking strangers for coffee, until a generous, dark-haired girl referred him to the coffee shop next door, saying that her friend works there on weeknights.  
He pushed open the doors, expecting anything but the barista who stood behind the counter.  
She was a girl, about his age, with dark skin and fiery red hair wound into two thick braids, wearing an apron and name tag that read “ANN.” But in some act of defiance to the spelling, she’d stuck an extra piece of paper onto the end, with the letter E drawn on it in sharpie.  
Gilbert was head over heels instantly. He assumed that the barista was about as tired as him, given that it was almost midnight and she was still working. But Gilbert’s mind was still barely functioning from lack of sleep, and something in him decided that now was the best time to flirt with her.  
He thought that the way to do that would first be to get her attention. So he made his way to the counter in what he thought was a swagger but was in fact more of a stumble, and rattled off the longest coffee order he could muster.  
Not his proudest moment.  
She stared at him, blue eyes blinking. After a moment, she grabbed a cup and asked him his name, repeating the order word-for-word. He gaped, and could only stand there nodding like an idiot, as she made it perfectly. The girl, Anne, did it like a science, mumbling under her breath the measurements and flavors he’d requested, not that he even remembered. It was a while, but Gilbert found that he couldn’t stop watching her, the way she did everything with dramatics, and the way her voice sounded as she murmured his order, making him think that even she didn't realize she was speaking.  
He wondered if she did this for every order.  
She gave him his cup a while later, somehow managing a smile, and the total, which seemed to him far too low for something so labor-intensive. He paid, said something else that he couldn't entirely remember, and wandered out, more in love than ever.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the 2nd chapter! It's pretty long, so be warned! Thanks again to @yesshirbert for beta reading.

Gilbert woke up, his face pressed against his nightstand. His head hurt and his feet ached and he was still jetlagged, and it was probably either way too early or way too late for him to get any work done. But when he opens his eyes, he smiled.  
There was the coffeecup, half full of the ridiculous order he’d thought was a good idea, and his name was scrawled across it in the most wonderfully messy handwriting Gilbert had ever seen. If he got out of bed a little earlier than usual, or if he refilled the cup with instant coffee and taken it to class that day then nobody knew, so it was alright. He wasn't desperate.  
Yet.  
But during his afternoon break between lectures, he caught up with Diana, who was emerging from one of her engineering courses, looking thoroughly lost.  
“Diana!” He called to her, by way of greeting. Diana went to high school with him, and although they were acquaintances at best there, going to the same college made them good friends by proxy.  
“Hi,” she said, stuffing her laptop into her backpack and looking cheerful even while stressing over notes. She glanced briefly at his coffeecup, but thankfully she didn't say anything.  
Until they were out in the courtyard. “So,” she began, looking at him. Gilbert refused to catch on.  
“how was the coffee?” She asked after a few seconds, in a way she probably thought of as being subtle.  
“It was fine,” Gilbert mumbled, and although it pained him, he reached out and dropped the cup into the nearest trash can.  
“Did you meet Anne?” Diana asked, now abandoning all hopes of indirectness as they turned the corner near their dorm.  
“I did,” Gilbert said, still feeling the loss of his coffeecup.  
“Well,” Diana grinned at him. “She’s working at the café tonight, if you want more coffee.”  
Gilbert was remarkably restrained, in his opinion. He nodded politely and waited a whole thirty seconds as she made her way into the dorm room before checking his watch, grinning like a madman and wondering what time specifically qualified as “tonight.”

Anne was typing up an essay outline when she head the door open and shut, and a few moments later, saw Diana enter the dorm, grinning in a way that made Anne nervous.  
“What is it?” Anne asked, heading to the kitchen for something to eat.  
“Nothing,” Diana said, lilting the word and plopping herself down on the couch, next to Josie and Ruby. Anne silently cursed herself, remembering the reason she’d escaped to the confines of her own room was to avoid the two. Diana kept speaking as Anne reluctantly sat next to them. “Just ran into Gilbert Blythe today.”  
The two other girls whipped their necks around so quickly that Anne feared for their heads.  
“Gilbert Blythe?” Ruby practically squealed, her face already turning a darker shade of pink.  
“Yeah. He was asking me about that coffeeshop Anne works at.”  
Anne pursed her lips in preparation of the gaze the two girls unleashed upon her. It was confused, definitely, but also hostile in an irrationally terrifying way.  
“He went to that café?” Josie asked, her phone dropped on the armrest next to her as she leaned in closer to Anne.  
“Yeah.” Anne tried not to look like she was slowly inching away. Ruby tilted her nose, her expression carefully neutral. “He ordered some coffee.”  
Josie nodded thoughtfully, as if this was information that needed serious consideration before further action was taken. “Does he come there a lot?”  
“This was the first time. I’ll ask Jane, though. If she’s working-“  
“We could go tonight, right?” Ruby asked, looking at Anne hopefully. Anne shrugged and made a noncommittal noise, not wanting to disappoint her.  
“Are you working tonight, Anne?” Josie asked, as if she’d thought for the past few weeks Anne made a habit to leave the dorm in an apron and return late in the night for fun.  
“Yeah. Every weekday.” Anne said, giving up hope of subtly inching away and opting to stand up and leave the room entirely.  
She hoped that Gilbert wouldn't be coming tonight.

Josie, Ruby, and Diana all left before Anne did, eagerly anticipating Gilbert Blythe’s appearance. Anne took a little more time on her essay, unsure how her roommates made the marks that they did on their courses. None of them were taking easy classes, and Anne never saw them study, but they seemed to have incredible testing skills. It annoyed Anne to no end, but she guessed it was one of those things there would never be a conclusive answer to.  
By the time she’d made it out the dorm, it was nearly dark, and the path to the coffeeshop was nearly deserted. Anne was so focused on keeping her thoughts away from the escaped serial killer news stories she’d read that she almost didn't see Billy Andrews until rounding the narrow shortcut she’d found a few days into her stay at university. He looked huge in the shadowy streetlight, and she couldn't quite conceal her jump.  
She remembered him from one of her classes, although she couldn't quite place which one. He, though, obviously remembered her.  
“Shirley!” He boomed, loud and more boisterous than most people should be on a Tuesday evening. He stood in front of her path, boxing her in the narrow space between hedge bushes and the alley behind Macy’s.  
“Hello, Billy,” Anne said, doing her best not to look directly into his eyes. She clutched her jacket tighter around her.  
“Long time no see, Shirley. It must’ve been last Monday, right?” He said, looking down at her. “You remember that?”  
Anne did remember, all in one flash. They had been sitting next to each other during a pop quiz and Anne had told the teacher about him looking over at her notes. It had seemed worth it at the time, but now, in the alleyway, cornered between a maybe-drunk Billy and a wall, she wasn't sure.  
“You know,” he said, unaware, of her hands beginning to tremble. “I failed that quiz. You owe me one, Shirley.”  
Although Anne disagreed wholeheartedly with that statement, Billy’s rising voice forced her to try a different approach. “I’m sorry, Billy. I didn't mean-“ “You owe me one, Shirley,” he repeated, edging closer to her. Anne’s heat was thundering in her chest, and she glanced around her, fruitlessly looking for ways to slip away.  
“Billy?” A voice said from behind. Anne glanced around the corner and saw the owner of the voice. Billy was stepping away, but she didn't think that her legs would support a step.  
“Hey, man.” Billy said, clapping Gilbert on the back. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”  
“Yeah,” Gilbert said, glancing between him and Anne. “I was just- gonna go get some coffee, so-“  
“Alright, I’ve got a test coming up, so catch up with you later?” Billy said, sounding remarkably more sober. Gilbert nodded, and Anne could feel his gaze on her. She refused to look in his direction, and only moved when Billy was walking away.  
Her body’s adrenaline kicked in too late, and she was nearly sprinting down the alleyway, only barely aware of Gilbert jogging after her.  
“Hey, Anne-“  
Anne refused to look back at him, even as she slowed her pace minutely. “I have to get to work.” She said, more to herself than to him. She turned her head slightly, and Gilbert was behind her, his face annoyingly sincere.  
“Are you alright?” He asked. She stopped walking, her rage at Billy manifesting too slowly and choosing another target.  
“I’m fine.” She said, perhaps more sharply than she needed to.  
She was sure she’d be late, but that wasn't the real reason she half-ran the two blocks to the coffeeshop.  
She was behind the counter already, thankfully not late and waiting for a customer when he walked in, breathing a little heavier than usual. Remorse was starting to catch up with her, but she pushed it aside.  
He made a beeline to the register when he spotted her. Anne wished that Jane was there, so she could’ve hidden in the bathroom for the whole time he was there. But as it was, with Jane on her break, she couldn't leave a customer unattended to.  
“Can I help you?” She asked, looking at a point over his shoulder. He didn't say anything, and Anne hated silences so much that she was willing to talk to him if it meant breaking one. She scraped together all her remaining courage, and attempted an apology.  
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” she said, switching her gaze so that she was staring furiously at the stack of paper cups on the counter. “I’m Anne, by the way. Anne Shirley.”  
The door opened, and her three suite mates walked in, just as Gilbert nodded. “No problem,” he said, almost in a whisper.  
“Can I get you anything?” She asked again, averting her eyes from Josie but still feeling her glare.  
He started, apparently realizing where he was. “Yeah.” He rattled off his order, which wasn't as long as the last one but still fairly complex, and Anne distracted herself with making it, avoiding the gaze of basically everyone in the shop as she did.  
He’d barely paid when Josie was at her side, flanked by a hysterical-looking Ruby and Diana, who was sending her apologetic gazes.  
“Can I talk to you?” Josie said hotly.  
Anne was about to say that she was the only employee, but Jane had come out from the back. Instead, she merely nodded, gesturing to her co-worker.  
Josie marched her to the corner of the shop, blocking her from the other customers. Anne bit her lip, not usually excited about any conversations she had with Josie, but this one in particular.  
“Why were you talking to Gilbert?” She asked, her arm around Ruby’s shoulders. The girl was red faced, but whether it was from anger or grief, Anne couldn't tell. “Ruby’s been in love with him ever since orientation! “You,” she said, gesturing in Anne’s general vicinity, “Don’t talk to him.  
Anne shrugged, deciding not to comment on how any love found at orientation was probably destined for a tragic ending. “He ordered a drink.”  
Josie faltered slightly, and for a minute Anne thought she’d be able to make an escape back to the counter. But she regained her furious expression immediately, perhaps with even more vigor than before. “Well,” she said, picking up her tirade with barely a hitch. “Don’t get any ideas.”  
Her affirmative nod gave Anne the impression that the conversation was over, so she hurried back to the counter, ignoring Jane’s concerned glance, and trying not to glance at her roommates or Gilbert.

Gilbert was in the café until late that night, trying to study, although he kept glancing over his laptop at the barista behind the counter. Soon the room emptied out, even the three girls that had cornered Anne earlier leaving, only one of them paying her a goodbye.  
He stared at the cursor on the screen, realizing slowly that he’d only managed to write his name and the date for the essay, and the date was wrong. Giving up hope of finishing early, he closed the laptop and made his way over to the counter, brandishing his empty cup and praying to not do anything stupid.  
Again.  
Anne was alone at the counter, her co-worker apparently done for the night. She was looking just as tired as last night, but Gilbert knew that she functioned much better on low energy than him. Currently, she was scrubbing at the countertops, her fiery braids tossed over her shoulders and the extra E on her name tag askew.  
Gilbert sat on a barstool in front of her, glad that his motor skills had improved since last night. She glanced up at him, then back down. In a dull, whisper-like monotone, she asked, “Can I help you?”  
He nodded, flashing one of his best smiles. Of course, it only worked when the intended recipient was looking you in the eyes, so the effect fell rather flat. “Yeah-“ he said, pausing to clear his throat. “Could I get a refill?”  
She nodded, and wordlessly took his cup. “Same order?”  
He nodded, and- stupidly- cleared his throat again. “Yeah. Vanilla latte.” He inwardly cursed his stupid scratchy voice, his terrible vocabulary, and his ridiculous choice of drink (why couldn't he have ordered something like black coffee? Or even a cappuccino. But vanilla latte? Why couldn't he tolerate caffeine like a normal college student?) and anything else he’d done worthy of cursing.  
“Do you still have the specials?” He asked, partly to keep away from his internal tirade.  
“Yeah.” Anne, done with the drink, looked up at him. “If you get carrot cake with a latte, it’s fifteen percent off.”  
He smiled, mostly because she was finally maintaining eye contact with him. “Any good?”  
She snapped the lid on his cup. “It’s divine.”  
Maybe it was the way she said divine, the way she folded her arms and rested her elbows on the countertop while she looked at him, but Gilbert all but melted. He cleared his throat once more, too distracted to berate himself for it, and smiled at her. “I’ll take a slice.”  
She handed him the coffee, and slipped out from the counter to open the dessert shelf on the side of the café, coming back around to hand a slice to Gilbert. He smiled at her again, because even if he’d been stupid before she was talking to him. And she was standing close to him, holding the plate in her hands elegantly, and he’d never met anyone who could make something like that look elegant, but somehow she did.  
So of course he had to ruin it.  
He looked at the cake, murmuring, “It matches your hair, Carrots,” and he reached out and touched one of her braids, because in his experience, girls liked being referred to by the color of their hair, and they liked Gilbert’s flirty touches.  
He should’ve known that Anne wouldn’t.

She dropped the plate, and Gilbert heard it shatter before he registered her hand drawing back. Anne slapped a lot harder than he would've thought.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but by then she was in the employee’s only area, in the kitchen, shut behind a door.  
He heard ir slam, and stood for a minute in the room, baffled. He cleared up his stuff with barely a blurry idea of what he was doing, the actual facts only hitting him on the long walk back to his dorm, and he rubbed at his face, his left cheek still stinging.  
He cursed his stupid methods of flirtation the whole way back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment below, they are always appreciated.


	3. Chapter 3

Anne came out of the bathroom no less than three-quarters of an hour later, when she was completely sure that even Gilbert Blythe wouldn't have the patience to still be waiting outside. Anne had spent half an hour while she had locked herself in the stall switching between mortified, enraged, and saddened, and the rest of the time furiously texting Diana.   
When she finally came out, her shift was over and the shop was supposed to be shut down for the night. Anne closed up with shaking hands, at any minute ready to bolt and sprint the whole way back to her dorm.  
She’d finally made it back when the streetlights turned off, and Diana was still up and waiting for her. The darker-haired girl took one look at Anne, who was barely holding back tears, stood up, and hugged her.   
The two girls sat up all night talking, keeping their voices hushed enough that they didn't carry through the thin walls.

The next few days spent at the coffeeshop were always accompanied by Josie and Ruby, who were all too happy to occupy Gilbert when he showed up, looking annoyingly sincere and shooting glances at the counter that Anne pretended not to see. Neither of her suite mates noticed anything wrong- after all, Anne wasn't even supposed to be talking to him. 

Gilbert still came to the café, although Anne never once spoke to him, barely even looked him in the eyes. He spoke about it to Diana once, rushed between classes, and she’d looked at him with pity.  
“I know you didn't mean anything by it, Gil,” she said, gathering up her stuff from where the spot he'd found her in the foodcourt. “But Anne’s just- sensitive- about her hair. You should apologize.” He let out a breath, walking with her down the hall. “I’ve been trying to. She won’t even look at me, Diana.”  
Diana, if possible, looked at him with even more sympathy. “I’ll try to say something to her, but she was really upset, just so you know.”  
Gilbert rubbed a hand over her face, then paused, stopping in the middle of the hall. “How upset?”  
Diana pressed her lips together. “Really upset.” She repeated.  
Guilt hit him like a punch to the gut. “I really am sorry,” he repeated, this time a little quieter.  
“I know,” she said, looking at him in a way he couldn't place.

Gilbert stepped into the café, hoping in vain that the two girls he’d been seeing there the past week wouldn't show up. It was futile, though, as the moment he walked through the door and that little bell above him announced his existence, they waved him over to their spot at the counter. Or rather, Diana waved him over, the taller girl (Jessie? Josie?) grinned widely at him, and the shorter one stared at him dreamily. He chanced a glance over the counter, at Anne, but she seemed more focused on the coffee grinds she was cleaning off it’s surface.  
He went and sat by Diana, who looked at him with a mixture of pity and amusement as the two girls chatted with him, inserting giggles and hair twirling between every one of their sentences. After a minute, she left to go to the bathroom, leaving him alone with the two as he tried to copy some notes onto his computer. They seemed to loose interest a few minutes after he’d started responding to their questions with a series of noncommittal “hmm”s, and they turned to Anne, who was cleaning up behind the counter, devoid of any customers to shield herself with.  
“I like what you did with your hair today, Anne,” the shorter one said. He’d learned, in the past half hour, that her name was Ruby, but sometimes habits were hard to break.  
“Thanks,” Anne said uncertainly, reaching up to touch the braid she’d wound around her head. Gilbert had stopped typing altogether, but kept his laptop open in order to keep up the pretense.  
“Yeah,” Josie said. (Josie! That was her name!) “Don’t you ever think of straightening it?”  
Anne bit down on her lower lip, returning to the coffee machine she’d been fiddling with. “No. It’ll take too much time.”  
Josie cocked her head. Gilbert lowered himself even more into his computer, but he still heard the exchange.   
“But didn't it take just as much time to dye it?”  
Anne’s cheeks flushed, but she mumbled her response so quietly that Gilbert almost missed it. “It’s natural red. I didn't dye it.”  
He saw her hands clench around the paper cup she was holding, so tight that the cardboard started to pinch in.  
Josie either couldn't see, or she just didn't care. “Really?” She said, in a tone that implied the didn't believe Anne at all. “That’s…interesting.”  
Anne glanced quickly, quietly at Gilbert, who dropped his eyes to look like he hadn't been staring hopelessly at her.  
Josie narrowed her eyes slightly, but Gilbert couldn't tell why. After a few minutes of a thoroughly uncomfortable silence, Diana (bless her) came back, smiling brightly. She was either unaware of the tension or just chose to ignore it. Either way, Gilbert ended up breathing a sigh of relief when the three girls left the café, and Diana flashed an encouraging smile over her shoulder.  
He took a moment to prepare himself to speak with Anne one-on-one for the first time since that night, as he had dubbed it since. It couldn’t be that hard to apologize, right? It was all just a simple misunderstanding. Gilbert always had a way with words, that night had been one of his rare slip-ups. She’d forgive him soon enough. They always did.  
After a moment Gilbert dared to look up and meet her eye, giving one of his best winning smiles.  
Anne pressed her lips together, her cheeks still flushed, and promptly turned to take an elderly couple’s order. She somehow kept busy, even with the small mount of customers in the shop. Anne didn't even make any more eye contact with him until a while later, when it was almost dark outside.  
She was wiping down the counter for perhaps the fourth time that evening, still keeping her eyes affixed firmly downwards. Jane, at one point, hurried off to the back, mumbling something about it being her break. Gilbert just thought that she wanted to get away from the two of them for a moment. He didn't blame her.  
Anne, though, looked after her wistfully. After a moment of silence where Gilbert was desperately trying to conserve his laptop’s failing battery life, threw away her rag and marched around the counter, her eyes sharp and suspicious.  
“Why are you still here?” She asked, the words coming out almost in a blur.  
Gilbert floundered for a moment, his eyes wide at the first words she’d spoken to him almost all week. “Um-“ he mumbled, pausing for a long enough time that any person would be able to tell he was lying. “Just- doing some revisions,” he finished awkwardly, still trying to keep his staring to a minimum.  
She snorted. “You’ve been here all the time this whole week,” she said, her voice taking on an edge. “What do you want?”  
“I don’t want anything!” Gilbert said, perhaps too defensively. He was starting to think he’d sorely misjudged his task, which was becoming quite common pattern between him and Anne. “I mean- I was just trying to apologize.”  
She opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again. After a minute she formulated a response. “Apologize?”  
He hated how surprised she’d sounded. “Yeah. About- the other day. I really am sorry. It won’t happen again.”  
She pursed her lips, then turned around, marching towards the door. “Thank you,” she said, wrapping herself up in her coat, and staring daggers at him. “But I do not accept your apology.”  
She glared at him one last time before slamming the door shut.  
———

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! Hope you liked it, and if you did, please leave a comment.  
> (If you want to know when I'm posting, check out my tumblr @imnewwhere. I'll usually leave a notice for anyone who wants to know! )


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